In WDM transmission systems, increasing capacity in an optical fiber link at unchanged amplification bandwidth requires to increase the spectral efficiency.
To get such an increase, it is possible to use complex modulation formats. This allows to go beyond the spectral efficiency of polarization division multiplexed (or PDM) quaternary phase shifted keying (or QPSK) which is the preferred solution in the industry for 100 Gb/s optical transport, but at the expense of strongly reduced transmission distances.
One may also reduce the channel spacing thanks to the use of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (or OFDM) or Nyquist pulse shaping techniques. Unfortunately, this solution must be limited to a channel spacing equal to the symbol rate in order to avoid drastic linear crosstalk issue.
But, one may also increase the optical bandwidth. Unfortunately, most of the current WDM transmission systems use erbium doped fiber amplifiers (or EDFAs) whose optical bandwidth appears to be limited to a maximum of 5 THz (˜40 nm) since almost fifteen years. Therefore the optical bandwidth of EDFAs is nowadays a limiting factor to the continuous increase of WDM transmission system capacity.